President Bush at O’Hare in 2001From the way it looks, 2007 will be the worst year for delays and cancellations of any on record. 28% of flights in the first seven months were delayed, cancelled or diverted.

Back on July 6th of this year I wrote an article entitled Summer 2007 To Be Worst EVER For Delays! Near the end of that article I predicted that if the airlines didn’t do something themselves about all these problems, the government would.

So, it’s no surprise that recently President Bush directed aviation officials and regulators to reduce air traffic delays by next summer so we don’t get a repeat of this one. Last month Bush enlisted Transportation Secretary Mary Peters to work with the industry and report back by year-end with some solutions. Possibilities such as government-mandated flight reductions, capacity caps and congestion pricing are all being studied.

Although very premature at this point, I still think we should at least examine the prospect of another possibility- Could the airline industry ever face complete re-regulation? Or at least a re-regulated state of existence to the extent that the government would have a larger role in controlling what the airlines do then it does now, but not quite what it had when the industry was a regulated entity?

Alright, I’ll go first…
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Sure that’s a possibility (I’m no expert, I just point the plane) but personally I don’t think the government really wants to regulate the airline industry again, and here’s a few reasons why.

• A large preoccupation in the Middle East with it’s associated capital expenditures and government resource requirements
• A much stronger national environment today arguing in favor of less government is more
• A lot of pressure from the airline lobby

With the worst year on record so far with delays and their resulting customer unhappiness, I thought re-regulation would be an interesting prospect to at least take a look at. Either way, 2007 is sure to be a benchmark for all future measurements of airline performance.

~Capt’n Chris

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